Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1700-1719)
SIR KEVIN
TEBBIT KCB CMG, AIR
VICE MARSHAL
CLIVE LOADER
OBE AND MR
IAN LEE
17 DECEMBER 2003.
Q1700 Chairman: What political objectives
existed in the military plans when the Americans and the British
joined the preparations in May and June 2002?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: That was earlier
than in fact there was any serious engagement.
Q1701 Chairman: So UK joined US contingency
planning.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Contingency
planning, yes, but that was very much contingency planning rather
than serious developed planning. I do not think there was any
specificity there worth talking about. As you know, this was a
campaign anyway characterised by the need for flexibility because
right at the late stages we still had a plan to go in through
northern Turkey and it was only at a very late stage that we switched.
The actual force package, numbers and configuration, did not firm
up until really very late in the day.
Q1702 Mr Havard: On this question of
relationships in part, but also the whole timing, you had these
people embedded in Tampa and that was particularly important,
particularly important later on in terms of timing your policy
I would guess, but we will come back to that later on. We were
told they were doing no-foreigners planning round about May 2002,
"they" being the Americans. We are told that our people
became involved with the Australians and the Americans round about
the June 2002. The suspicion therefore is that they already had
the plan to go in the following March which is in fact what happened
at the end of the day, yet military advice was saying we could
either do it in the spring or in the autumn. One of the things
we want to know is how the political process works in terms of
influence, because we claim influence. How were we influencing
that decision-making process through the period? Was it effectively
the case that we were simply dragged along on an already, no-foreigners,
planned, pre-determined American timetable, or were these sophisticated
relationships you outlined for us, actually influencing the reality
of the realpolitik of whether the military action was necessary
or not necessary?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Neither of those
things, but if any of them closer to the second. I do not believe
the President himself had any fixed views until very, very late
in the day, until after the failure of the second UN Security
Council resolution, let alone the British Government having such
fixed views. This arises from a misperception of the difference
between military men told to undertake contingency planning, what-ifs,
both for their own sake and to exert pressure to secure a political
objective without military force actually having to be used and
a decision to employ military force, which was always a political
decision. Not only do I have no doubt that the political decision
was not taken in the UK until very, very close to 20 March, indeed
formally speaking after Parliament had debated—and this
was not a straightforward issue in Britain, as you recall—but
I also have the same feeling about the United States. I am not
dissembling. There were lots of rumours in the press and everything
else and one would telephone one's American contacts and say "Are
you absolutely sure, because these guys seem to have very clear
military planning" and they would say "They have been
told to plan for contingencies. That is not the President's decision.
We are watching what is happening in the UN and that is where
we are operating from". That was a genuine thing. The UN
discussions were very serious, very thorough. We pushed for the
second resolution, hoping to achieve it. It was a great tragedy
that it was not achieved, because had other countries been able
to put pressure on Saddam Hussein as well and convince him that
he really needed to comply, then it still might have been possible
to avert military action, but there we are. So the idea of the
machine going on with this fixed date is absolutely wrong.
Q1703 Mr Viggers: Ultimate responsibility
was vested in the Cabinet and the War Cabinet of course, but reporting
to them and advising them were the Chiefs of Staff Committee and
the Defence Crisis Management Organisation. Can you please describe
the roles and responsibilities of the Chiefs of Staff Committee
and the Defence Crisis Management Organisation?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: The Crisis Management
Organisation is simply a management machine which ensures that
decisions of a strategic nature and guidance of a strategic nature
are pushed down to the commanders through PJHQ and into the field
and similarly receives information back out from them and puts
it together to ensure that politicians and Parliament are kept
informed of what is going on. The Crisis Management Organisation
is essentially an executive managerial tool. The Chiefs of Staff
Committee formally speaking is an organisation which advises the
Chief of Defence Staff, who is personally responsible for advising
the Defence Secretary and the government on military operations.
In practice it has evolved over the years as the central forum
in London where military operations are planned, discussed and
very high level strategic guidance is given. Over the years, since
we have had so many operations, certainly since the second half
of the 1990s, it has become a quite sophisticated forum where
not only the chiefs of staff sit, I sit as permanent secretary,
the policy director as well, but also we invite members of the
Whitehall community, the Foreign Office, the Cabinet Office, the
intelligence agencies, DFID, to be present too, so that there
is a collective opportunity to take stock of what is going on,
ensure that everybody is co-ordinated. It was not always like
that. Looking back to the Falklands, I remember my predecessor,
Frank Cooper, used to have his own group as well as the Chiefs
of Staff Committee, but it is totally inefficient to do that these
days. You have to do integrated planning, political and military
planning and action. Quite apart from anything else, you can really
only have staff feeding into one forum each day. The Chiefs of
Staff Committee would meet basically at least once and mostly
twice a day to discuss what was going on and to brief the Secretary
of State and Ministers what was going on, underpinned by material
which came usually from people sitting in the Defence Crisis Management
Organisation from six o'clock in the morning until six o'clock
at night and then a brief to the Secretary of State at half past
ten in the evening. It became a very battle driven sort of organisation.
You could say for these purposes the Defence Crisis Management
Organisation almost became the secretariat of the Chiefs of Staff
Committee.
Q1704 Mr Viggers: How did you ensure
that decisions taken by those committees or advice given are made
known to ministers and there is political input and political
awareness in the decisions which are being taken?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: First I should
say that there are two separate distinct phases. One is the preparatory
phase, where political control is much closer and advice from
people like myself much more intensive and military planning is
conducted within very clear parameters: when to call out reserves,
when to decide that it is possible to begin overt preparations
linked to the diplomatic process, overall size of force commitments,
those sorts of questions. When it moves to an operational phase,
where the military commanders come much more into the fore, basically
politicians are receiving information and exercising only very
strategic guidance, giving the commanders the flexibility and
freedom necessary to deliver their objectives, knowing what the
intent is. So there are two distinct phases. Secondly, the Secretary
of State would be briefed by the committee itself, sitting there,
before he went over to Number 10 for the War Cabinet, but also
there would be a very formal system of written material going
to him and submissions on individual subjects, all turned round
very quickly in a matter of hours by a very efficient secretariat.
That is how it was done and is done and it is a pretty Rolls-Royce
system these days because we have done it so often and so regularly
over the years.
Q1705 Mr Viggers: I am intrigued by the
reference you made to "the President had not made his mind
up". I think back to Montesquieu and the separation of powers.
It is so much easier, is it not, for someone to say that the President
has not made his mind up than for a Secretary of State or Prime
Minister to say they have not made up their mind?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: More than that
actually. The President had congressional approval for military
operations against Iraq before the Prime Minister secured parliamentary
agreement. One could actually talk of it in those terms when it
was not possible to talk of it in quite the same way in the UK.
Q1706 Mr Viggers: In the UK there must
be an element of schizophrenia about our senior politicians who
must be planning in their departmental role for a military operation
and yet reserving to themselves the decision-making capacity for
a later stage.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: I do not think
there is that much difference between the two systems. Military
men were told to get on with their military planning and to be
as prepared as they could be, on the understanding that until
the political decision and order was communicated they did not
have a military operation. That was true in both cases.
Q1707 Mr Viggers: Finally, I should like
to pick up one other end, reference to the alliance not being
robust and that if it had been more robust it might have been
more effective, might have resulted in a more effective response
from Saddam Hussein. Are you saying that if the alliance seeking
to impose Resolution 1441 had been more robust, if our allies
had been more robust, you feel this might have persuaded the Iraqi
leadership to be more forthcoming?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: We shall never
know. We can all have our personal views.
Q1708 Mr Hancock: We might never know
about that, but there was never any doubt, was there? As you rightly
said, the American President already had political approval to
fight a war if he felt it was necessary. Really the question is
about the timing of it. Could anything have happened politically
that did not happen which might have secured a peaceful outcome
rather than a war outcome?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Right at the
last moment, had Saddam responded to the ultimatum, then there
would have been a peaceful outcome. Had we secured a second resolution,
then it may well be that the Iraqis would have realised that they
did indeed have to come into conformity.
Q1709 Mr Hancock: What was it that he
had to do? The final ultimatum was "Give us your weapons
of mass destruction", but he had consistently said that he
did not have them and challenged us to find them. If his response
was nothing other than that, there was no alternative for the
President except to fight a war, was there? It was obvious nobody
believed him.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: The position
was so clear in terms of rejection that there was no room for
diplomacy left at that stage. There is always room for diplomacy
if there is a willingness to see space for it. It was very clear
that there was no willingness on Saddam Hussein's part at the
end. There was rather more flexibility in the US President's position
than there was in Saddam Hussein's.
Q1710 Mike Gapes: You have already briefly
touched on the situation with regard to Turkey and clearly the
relatively late decision to move from a southern to a northern
attack on Iraq had some serious implications. Can you tell us
what the implications of that were? It clearly came very late
in terms of your planning. Can you tell us what led you to make
the decision and when you made that decision?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: It was a calculation
as to whether there would be agreement from the Turkish Government
to enable forces to transit through Turkey or not. We made that
decision slightly earlier than the United States did about their
own forces and therefore switched the planning—this is still
military contingency planning—to go in through the south.
I cannot remember the precise date of that but certainly during
January we were still seeking Turkish agreement to allow forces
to go through there. I remember going to Ankara myself at that
point for that purpose.
Mr Lee: It was shortly after that
visit, in fact in mid January, round about 17 January, that it
was decided that it was no longer viable to plan on our forces
going through Turkey and therefore we would have to look for a
southern option.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: I cannot be
certain of the precise date.
Q1711 Mike Gapes: Perhaps you could write
to us with the precise date.[3]
We were told by Lieutenant General Reith that the original American
plan was only to enter from the south and that the British proposed
entering from the north as well, to do both the south and the
north. I am not clear from what you have just said whether this
was done for political reasons or military reasons or a combination
of both. That was prior to the subsequent fact that you could
not go into Iraq using Turkey.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: It was what
I as a simple civilian would have called a rather straightforward
military judgment. If you want to exert pressure on somebody,
let alone conduct a military operation against him, it is best
to get him from both sides and both ends rather than only from
one direction. It therefore complicates the task of your opponent
if he does not quite know where you are coming from and you could
come from either end. It was a military judgment about the wisdom
of operations from two directions and it was a political necessity
to only do it from one direction. The military commanders judged
that notwithstanding the lesser desirability of only coming in
from one direction, it was manageable and so it proved.
Q1712 Mike Gapes: So the Americans originally
only planned to go from one direction. Then there was planning
to go from both directions to avoid congestion.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: It was not to
avoid congestion. I am not sure it was as simple as that either.
Mr Lee: Very originally they were
thinking of just coming in from the south and then there was a
discussion between them and us where this point came out that
from a military and strategic point of view you could have more
effect if you came from two directions.
Q1713 Mike Gapes: It was not to avoid
congestion.
Mr Lee: It was not really to do
with congestion; it was to do with exerting effect and not allowing
Saddam Hussein the possibility of falling back into the north
if forces were only coming from the south. Under that scenario
there would have been forces from the north as well, so he would
have been more compacted. That did not turn out to be possible.
Q1714 Mike Gapes: Clearly the implications
of the decision taken by the Turkish Parliament were then quite
serious and at the same time we had very strong political reasons
to maintain good relations with Turkey. How did that affect the
timing to shift our British military contribution from the north
to the south?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: It was really
rather straightforward. Military commanders had to judge the probability
of securing agreement from Turkey in the end. We had less flexibility
than the United States, being smaller and having smaller force
packages to offer. Therefore we had to move to a conclusion that
we should go in through the south earlier than it was necessary
for the Americans to conclude that. It was military advice which
led the Secretary of State to conclude that it was more sensible
to plan to seek to put forces in the south.
Q1715 Mike Gapes: That decision was taken
before the vote in the Turkish Parliament.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Yes.
Q1716 Mike Gapes: Was that based on a
calculation that the Turkish Parliament would make the decision
it did?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: It was based
on a military view of probability, which was put to ministers
and taken on that basis. What I am saying is that there was not
some sort of political judgment here. It was straightforward as
to whether we were likely to get agreement in the end. The judgment
of our military people was that it was unlikely.
Q1717 Mike Gapes: You could have made
that decision earlier.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: We could have
made it at any stage. We could never have bothered to make it.
We could have planned to go in through the south at any stage.
Q1718 Mike Gapes: Was the decision to
go from the south then delayed so that it was made later than
recommended by military advice because of the political sensitivities?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: No, it just
simply took some time to negotiate with the countries concerned
the basing and access agreements necessary to put our forces in
the south. The problem we have here is that you seem to be working
back from a date called 20 March, when it was not like that.
Q1719 Mike Gapes: Hindsight is sometimes
a useful thing. I am simply trying to understand the processes
which went on and the relationship between a decision and the
implementation of that decision. Clearly you had foreseen the
difficulties in Turkey before the United States did.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Not necessarily
before, but because we had a smaller force package to offer, it
was rather more crucial for us to know whether it was going to
be possible to put our forces in Turkey, because we had no other
forces anywhere else, or whether we should put our forces in the
south. The Americans always intended putting forces in different
places. It was easier for them to hold the decision until later.
We just had to make a calculation. It was more important for us
to decide before it was important for them, as is so often the
case when you are dealing with a super power who has more flexibility.
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